


Wear Our Bruises Like Watermarks

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 10:55:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10717998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: Post season 6 finale and the Alex/Lexie break up that happened entirely off screen:(He walks hunched over because if he's already half way to the floor he has less distance to cover in the fall)





	Wear Our Bruises Like Watermarks

_He walks hunched over and no one questions it. They assume it's the pain. Or the stitches. Or the scar tissue._

_It's none of those things._

_He walks hunched over and everyone assumes...._

_(He walks hunched over because if he's already half way to the floor he has less distance to cover in the fall)_

 

 

 

 

He discharges himself against medical advice. Against _someone's_ advice. He stopped listening weeks ago, fingernails down blackboards and pointed stares of pity that he never asked for but somehow ended up with in spades none the less.

The front door sticks when it rains. A shoulder to the paint-chipped woodwork greys his vision to blurry and blue and faded shade.

It always fucking rains.

The soundtrack in his head skips a beat or seven.

She's long gone. He breathes and even the smell of her has evaporated.

He'd laugh if it wasn't agony and shame and a spine shattering terror that has taken up residence where his blood used to course.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

He can hear ghosts on the stairs. Sees them slide in and out from behind the curtains. Ethereal and vague. He rams a scream back down his own throat.

So deep he thinks he might choke.

Vomit.

Suffocate and die.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

His keys are where she said they'd be. It takes his fingers three attempts to co-ordinate a movement fine enough to scoop them up.

He fills a glass with water and tips the lot over his head. Down his back. Over his lips. Cold and hot and ice all at once.

Screwed up beyond his wildest dreams.

And they're pretty wild these days.

His dreams.

Blood and eyes and blood and blood and blood and silence.

Silence.

The car seat is solid against his shoulder blades and he contemplates spinning the wheels all the way to the right.

Despite the fact that the road continues on straight ahead.

Maybe even curls a little to the left.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

It's hours, minutes, days, seconds, weeks.

Black road and black night and even blacker sky.

He stops at roadside memorials to see if he can find his own name carved deep into the wood. A stain that will outlast them all.

He doesn't.

Not yet.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

He drags the trip out.

Switches his cell phone to on at random intervals, just to prove it to himself.

The screen remains blank. He knew it would.

He puts hotel rooms that he can't afford on plastic that he should cut in half. Sits in the shower stall until his chest stops heaving and the water runs to cold.

The water never runs to quite cold enough.

The bed remains untouched.

He'll sleep when he's dead.

Blood and eyes and blood and blood and blood and silence.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

When he's feeling charitable he'll offer platitudes into the cool night air. But they're thin and the warmth that they bring is short-lived and staining.

He likes to think she kissed him goodbye while he was still ventilated so that he couldn't fight back. Because if he'd been able to fight back then she'd still be around.

But he's never fought for anything that was being ripped and torn and shredded away, so he doubts it would be true even as he's clinging desperately to the belief that it is.

Fingernails chipped and bleeding.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

He buys cigarettes from a neon bright corner store at three in the morning. Chain smokes the entire pack, lights the next from the embers of the last.

Coughs 'til he vomits in the gutter by his open car door.

Lets the agony engulf him because at least it's something other than numb.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

He turns the car into her street at a crawl. Gas guage on next to empty and icy palms incongruently slick against the steering wheel.

It's not raining here.

 

 

 

 

_He stands with his back against the wall and no one questions it. They assume it's easier that way. Something to hold him up. To take some of the weight._

_It's none of those things._

_He stands against the wall and everyone assumes..._

_(He stands against the wall because it's one less direction he has to defend to the death)_

 

 

 

 

She opens the door but doesn't really look out. Disengages the locks and twists the handle like she's expecting a guest.

He's fairly certain that she isn't expecting him.

She double takes. He grins. Cold and flat. Grabs a fist-ful of blonde in retaliation and presses her back against the plasterboard wall.

She fights. He's glad.

He needs her to fight.

Because he's not sure how much longer he'll be able to do it for himself.

Not sure how much longer he'll want to.

She wrenches back and screams in his face. A shrieking conglomeration of syllables and sentences.

He blinks.

Doesn't speak. He'd need air for that. And words. And something to say.

He has nothing.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

She balls her fists in his t-shirt, pushes as she pulls.

Back and forth 'til he's spinning, spinning, spinning.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

He's crying.

He only knows this because she blurs behind a waterfall. Blonde and pink and denim jeans, an image degraded just enough that, for a split second, he can't tell her from _her_.

One from the other.

Blonde and bottle blonde and fingers and lips and his name, whispered.

An apology.

It all starts to sound the same in the end.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

He sleeps for three days.

On and off.

Blood and eyes and blood and blood and blood and silence.

Off and on.

She's there every time he wakes. And every time he's surprised. She brings him food that he struggles to swallow and forces pain meds and antibiotics down his throat with water from a clear plastic bottle. It only spills over his chin and stains the bedsheets to blue black in the end.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

She reaches to pull at the pillow under his head and he catches her wrist, wraps his fingers around the warm skin.

Waits for her to devour him whole.

She's hesitant. Endless lists of why and why not.

But they've never said no to each other. Not when it's mattered most.

 

 

 

 

\- - -

 

 

 

 

She slides fingertips across scar tissue until he no longer has the energy to flinch. Distracts him in the only way she knows how.

Exposure/response prevention.

Tried and true.

They were always at their most dysfunctional best when one of them was inches from unravelling. Or both of them.

He wakes up with a violent shudder and she silences his screams with her tongue and her words and the curve of her hip next to his.

She still fits.

She always has.


End file.
